In the history of anthropology, Miguel León Portilla occupies the ground between patient observation and the larger claims it makes possible.
Miguel León Portilla was born at Mexico City in 1926. His recorded nationality is Mexico. He was educated at National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Twentieth-century science was collaborative, expensive and political: the questions were pursued by teams, and the answers had consequences that reached well past the laboratory.
He held appointments at National Autonomous University of Mexico, where the work centred on aztec philosophy, nahuatl literature and anthropology.
His principal work is The Broken Spears. Anthropology is fieldwork before it is theory, and the fieldwork has often outlasted the theory.
Working from Mexico shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.
His work was formally recognised with the Guggenheim Fellowship, Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise and National Prize for Arts and Sciences.
Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Anthropology is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.
Miguel León Portilla died in 2019 at the age of 93. The work outlived the debates that surrounded it, which is the only durable form of scientific success.
Achievements
- Notable work: The Broken Spears
- Held posts at National Autonomous University of Mexico
- Educated at National Autonomous University of Mexico
- Fields of research: Aztec philosophy, Nahuatl literature, anthropology and history
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